tech-studies

git show

2 min read

git show

git show <object> prints the metadata and the diff of any single Git object — most often one commit — combining git log -1 and git diff for that object.

Why it matters

When a bug lands or a line looks wrong, you want to inspect one commit in full: its author, message, and exact patch. git show is the fastest way to answer “what did this commit actually change?”, and because it accepts any object type, it also dereferences tags, dumps a single file at a revision, or prints a raw blob — useful in review, bisect, and incident forensics.

How it works

git show resolves the argument, picks a formatter for that object type, and prints it. With no argument it defaults to HEAD.

ObjectWhat git show prints
CommitHeader + log message + diff vs first parent
Annotated tagTag message, then the commit it points to
TreeList of entries (mode, type, name)
BlobRaw file contents, no diff
  • A specific file inside a commit — git show <sha>:path/to/file prints that file as of that commit; git show HEAD~2:config.yml is a one-liner to read an old version without checking it out.
  • Merge commits — by default Git shows a combined diff (only hunks that conflicted); git show -m <merge> splits it into one diff per parent, and --first-parent shows it against the mainline only.
  • Formatting — --stat for a summary, --name-only for just paths, -p to force the patch. git show <sha> -- path limits the diff to one path.
  • Revision syntax works: HEAD@{yesterday}, main~3, v1.2^{commit}.

Example

$ git show abc123 --stat
commit abc123...  Author: Dev <d@x>  Date: ...
    Fix off-by-one in pager
 src/pager.c | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

$ git show v2.0:CHANGELOG.md | head   # read a file at a tag, no checkout

Pitfalls

  • Merge commits look empty — the default combined diff hides non-conflicting changes; use -m or --first-parent to see what a merge really brought in.
  • sha:file path is repo-relative — it is from the repo root, not your cwd; a wrong prefix yields “exists on disk, but not in ‘sha’“.
  • git show on a tree/blob has no diff — newcomers expect a patch and get a file listing or raw bytes instead.
  • Whitespace noise — like diff, add -w to suppress reformat-only churn when reviewing the patch.

See also

Graph View

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